Saturday, October 26, 2013

At one time the news media would be outraged. Freedom of the press and all that. Today it's either ignored or applauded by those same people.

Maryland state police and federal agents used a search warrant in an unrelated criminal investigation to seize the private reporting files of an award-winning former investigative journalist for The Washington Times who had exposed problems in the Homeland Security Department's Federal Air Marshal Service.

Reporter Audrey Hudson said the investigators, who included an agent for Homeland's Coast Guard service, took her private notes and government documents that she had obtained under the Freedom of Information Act during a predawn raid of her family home on Aug. 6.

How many questions will paid liar Jay Carney get about this at the next White House press briefing? Any? Will there be outrage? Wanna bet? And what can the courts do? Who will enforce a court order against this administration?

The documents, some which chronicled her sources and her work at the Times about problems inside the Homeland Security Department, were seized under a warrant to search for unregistered firearms and a “potato gun” suspected of belonging to her husband, Paul Flanagan, a Coast Guard employee. Mr. Flanagan has not been charged with any wrongdoing since the raid.

The warrant, obtained by the Times, offered no specific permission to seize reporting notes or files.

It sounds like the American Gestapo used a bogus search warrant to seize her files and identify whistleblowers. It's the Chicago way. Would you be a whistleblower if you worked for the government and saw wrongdoing, knowing that your press contacts can have their records seized using a search warrant for some unrelated subject?

Here's a thought, whistleblowers. Use the "new" media. Leak to Rush Limbaugh (use his e-mail) or Glenn Reynolds or any other blogger, even me. It will eventually even get into the old government-loving press and your tracks will be covered. And if it doesn't, it will get around to anyone with a computer or a radio and that means just about everybody. That's how it's done in other repressive countries.

It’ll be interesting to see how other media organizations respond to this rather Putinesque episode.

If they ignore it Glenn, it will tell you a lot. If they don't ignore it, how the Obama administration reacts will tell you even more. Congressional hearings were once a way of bringing a wayward administration to heel. The hearings before Congress during the Obama administration have seen a long line of witnesses that have both stonewalled and shown a level of contempt for Congress that is unprecedented in my lifetime. Does anyone really think that Eric Holder will prosecute any miscreant in this administration? Holder's job is to protect Obama by any means necessary.